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Do You Think There Would Have Been a Large Protest if Steve Huffman Just Said We're Charging to Use the API to Increase Revenue? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been a long time Redditor and an Apollo user for about a year. I even paid for it. The main draw for me was the lack of advertising. In the back of my head I kept thinking that it couldn't last. Reddit is losing revenue from the lack of advertising views. It didn't

To me, Reddit's sky high pricing for the use of the API is intended to kill off apps like Apollo and for its users to move to the advertising filled web site or its own app, which I've never used.

If Huffman came out and said this was a revenue move right off would everyone be as upset as they are? Are people upset because Huffman completely mishandled the move or because they got their ad free experience turned off? If Reddit had an app the same quality as Apollo only with ads, would they be OK with it. I've only used Apollo so I can't speak to the other apps.

I can't blame Reddit for wanting to make money. It doesn't make a profit. Investors have to keep pouring in money to keep it going. They're going to want to see a return on their investment at some point. Usually they cash in on an IPO, but IPO's are generally only successful if the corporation looks like it will be profitable or at least the stock price continues to go up. That's how capitalism works.

In my case, I probably would have left regardless. I can't stand adds in my feed. I probably wouldn't have heard of lemmy or kbin if there hadn't been such an uproar. So I'm glad it went the way it did.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What I actually want is to be able to pay Reddit or Google or whoever it is a fair amount of money, say the amount they'd make by showing me a reasonable number of ads, plus a bit more. Say 10% more. In exchange for making more money from me than they would with ads, they would let me use old.reddit.com, or a third party app and not show me any ads.

I get an ad free service, Reddit gets more money than they would have before.

I figure that the amount would be easily less than $10 per year.

They would have to show something like this: at the end of each month, they tell me that I consumed so much of Reddit. They would have shown an ad every 25 posts, at $0.0005 per ad impression. So my payment for the month will be $x.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

But then you'd be a premium user and in a demographic even more likely to spend money so you'd get "catered purchase opportunities" from advertisers that paid even more for your special eyes...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Hence why I pay for YouTube.

I have as blockers up the wazoo, but they provide a very solid service. I’m happy to pay to get something I value without ads.

Digital ads are a time tax on the poor and technologically illiterate.